


you can be the moon

by mockturtletale



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, First Kiss, First Love, First Time, Friendship, Jealousy, M/M, Pining, before the band
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 12:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3289961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fact is; Luke Hemmings improves lives. </p><p>Not that Michael will ever tell him as much. </p><p>Certainly not when Luke seems to be doing his level best to prove otherwise by all of a sudden having a boyfriend that Michael hates passionately. Fervently. Maybe violently. On principle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can be the moon

**Author's Note:**

> S/O to Nina for a great many things. Namely her encouragement on this specifically and all her wonderful work on making me Muke AF in general. ♥ 
> 
> I guess this technically involves some underage shenanigans since it's set before the band made it big and as such the characters herein are still in high school and somewhere around the ages of 15/16, but no laws would be broken by what happens here. 
> 
> Thematically a nod to 5sos's 'Just Saying.' 
> 
> Beta-d by K and J, so any remaining mistakes are no one's fault but my own, and probably thanks to the ten thousand frantic last minute edits I did to this out of sheer terror. 
> 
> What's more Muke than Muke AF? 
> 
> Comments are wildly appreciated and will probably be met by grateful weeping. :D

Luke hasn’t even been in the band for a month when he brings the guy to practice. 

 

“So, um. This is my boyfriend,” he’s saying, tugging someone in behind him. Holding his hand. 

 

It was just last week that they’d had the Big Talk about sexuality and how it was never, ever going to be an issue in this band: Michael making it explicitly and obscenely clear via several gory overshares that he was bi, Calum shrugging and saying he could be too, probably, but didn’t think so so far.

 

At the time Michael had been a little put out about Luke once again stealing everyone’s thunder in that quiet, completely unassuming, painfully sincere sort of way of his. 

 

“I can sing, a bit.” 

 

“I’m gay, I’m pretty sure.” 

 

But now here he is towing his boyfriend to practice, and Michael is a bit more than merely put out. 

 

Luke’s boyfriend is a taller than him, almost as tall as Michael himself. He’s wearing what have to be painfully tight jeans and a gaudy turquoise snapback, backwards over his clearly very carefully styled undercut. He looks like he just walked straight out of a Glamour Kills ad, tattoos and all, and Michael can’t hold back his sneer. This guy isn’t Luke’s type _at all_. Michael might not know exactly what that is, yet, but he knows to his bones that this guy is not it. 

 

And still, Luke smiles shyly at him all through practice, when he’d normally be looking down at his guitar or making silly faces at Michael, bumping shoulders with Calum. 

 

The boyfriend only catches about half of Luke’s looks, too busy texting instead. 

 

His name is Tyler, and Michael hates him. 

 

“Your boyfriend and Calum’s sister have the same top,” Michael says later, when Luke has returned from walking Tyler down the drive to stand and stare expectantly at them, hands crossed behind his back. “Just saying.” 

 

Luke frowns, and so does Michael. 

 

____

 

Michael wasn’t really Luke’s biggest fan, at first. 

 

Calum had had something of a bro-crush on him, always whining to Michael about how great Luke’s youtube vids were, seeming jealous of the fact that Luke hung out with the year above rather than with people their age; people who were their age and Calum and Michael specifically. 

 

For one very difficult and terrifyingly uncomfortable moment, Michael had been forced to wonder if Calum’s fixation was, in fact, the bro variety of a crush at all. 

 

“Gross, Mikey,” had been Calum’s response to this carefully worded and halting query, thank christ. “I just want to make beautiful music with that beautiful boy, I have less than zero designs on his dick.” Michael had kind of wished that Calum had left it at the first part of that sentence, but he kept right on insisting that he wasn’t really all that interested in guys, and Michael had to believe him. 

 

Not because he said so, but because Michael had kissed Calum himself more times than he could count, in rounds of spin the bottle, in seemingly endless sessions of seven minutes in heaven, and Calum’s hands had without fail stayed above Michael’s waist. Michael, completely self assured in his experience that he was _everyone’s_ type, took this sign as gospel. Calum wasn’t into dudes in general, and was definitely not into Luke specifically, all his fangirling to the contrary. 

 

With this knowledge firmly in mind, Michael found Calum’s bro-crush infinitely easier to stomach. Easy enough to encourage and act on on his behalf, even. 

 

It was easy to stride up to Luke in the corridor and flick the soft skin of the back of his neck sharply, cruelly. 

 

It was surprisingly easy to convince him to come meet Michael’s friend Calum, once he’d assured Luke that unlike Michael himself, Calum wasn’t likely to inflict physical pain on him. 

 

It was almost easy to stand by and watch Calum gush all over Luke. ‘Almost easy’ because it was more than easy to watch Calum embarrass himself, but oddly less so to see Luke’s cheeks pink up in something like confused anger when he thought Calum was making fun of him, the blush across his cheekbones only blooming deeper, darker when it became apparent that Calum was deadly serious. 

 

“We could … would it … maybe we could get together after school, mess around with our guitars?” had been Luke’s still-shy offering to the conversation, and Michael, not even all that impressed by Luke yet, then, had felt it like a kick to the chest. 

 

Calum’s delighted, sunny grin had been all the confirmation that Michael didn’t need that Luke was theirs, now. 

 

Things have been varying degrees of easy and difficult and do-able and completely impossible ever since, and Michael has never liked change, but he might admit, if forced, that Luke has never been anything close to bad for them. 

 

Fact is; Luke Hemmings improves lives. 

 

Not that Michael will ever tell him as much. 

 

Certainly not when Luke seems to be doing his level best to prove otherwise by all of a sudden having a boyfriend that Michael hates passionately. Fervently. Maybe violently. On principle. 

 

____

 

Admittedly, Michael doesn’t engage in PDA with girls _or_ boys when they’re at house parties with their schoolmates. It’s not a fear-of-homophobia thing so much as it’s just a Michael-likes-his-privacy thing, but thus far he’s thought of Luke as probably being as private if not more so. He seems pretty uptight to Michael. 

 

Which is an impression that wars significantly with what Michael is actually seeing right now. 

 

Tyler, Michael’s newest and in fact only true nemesis, has Luke pushed up against a stretch of wall next to the staircase, right in the front hallway of the house, and Luke is doing absolutely nothing to protest the hands that Tyler has up underneath the back of Luke’s tshirt. It actually kind of looks like he’s pushing forward, into them, his shoulders and his skull the only parts of him that are still maintaining contact with the awful floral wallpaper, his hips a fluid curve arched up into Tyler’s grip, into Tyler’s hips. 

 

Sucking on Tyler’s tongue with his fingers white-knuckled in the long section of Tyler’s stupid, stupid undercut, Luke makes a pretty inviting picture. His chest is rising and falling fast, he’s so out of breath, but he doesn’t stop moving, doesn’t stop seeking more. His eyes are shut tight and when he isn’t kissing Tyler he’s almost panting, his mouth pressed to Tyler’s throat, to his shoulder. For a moment, Michael almost can’t bring himself to blame Tyler for this outrageous display. 

 

For a moment. 

 

And then Tyler’s palms start a painfully slow drag down into the dip of Luke’s lower back, lower and lower until his hands are definitely tucked all the way down the back of Luke’s infuriatingly tight jeans. Michael can easily see the points of Tyler’s knuckles standing out from the curve of Luke’s ass - a familiar line that Michael shouldn’t have to re-learn like this - and Michael is standing clear across the hallway, a throng of people between him and this tasteless spectacle.

 

This, there is no excuse for. 

 

Luke’s right foot lifts up off the ground and Michael should be pleased when Tyler The Douchebag takes one hand at least out of Michael’s bandmate’s jeans, but Tyler is hooking said hand up under Luke’s knee to hike his leg around Tyler’s waist, and Michael’s pretty sure he hadn’t quite finished his beer yet, which complicates the fact that his cup is now a crushed and mangled twist of plastic in his fist. 

 

“Do you need another drink, or are you still busy seething?” Calum’s voice drifts close to Michael’s ear, but Michael finds himself unable to turn away in order to face him. 

 

“I’m not seething, I’m being a good friend. You’re always saying I need to practice being more selfless,” he says in what he hopes is Calum’s direction. 

 

“And your idea of being selfless is watching Luke dry hump his boyfriend?” 

 

Michael wishes he had another cup to crush. He thinks, briefly, about reaching for Calum’s. 

 

“I’m keeping an eye on my friend’s dirtbag boyfriend,” he shouldn’t even have to make clear, because god, Calum, obviously. “I’m very selflessly looking out for my very good friend.” 

 

“You’re kind of growling, man,” Calum points out after a considerable pause, sounding almost sad about it. Pitying, maybe. 

 

Michael doesn’t really have anything to say in response to that, so he returns to his selfless staring instead. 

 

It’s no-one’s business but his own if his teeth hum a little in his gums as he does. 

 

_

 

Luke comes to find Michael and Calum when it’s time to go home, because they came here together and Michael is pleasantly surprised to find that Luke evidently plans on leaving that way too. 

 

Michael is miserably put out to find that even after he bravely abandoned his post to go do things that didn’t solely involve keeping an eye on Luke and his virtue, Luke continued down his path to debauchery. His mouth is kiss stung, and his hair is a lovely tousled wreck. He stands in front of a Michael, for a painful moment, made of all the ways that Tyler has left his mark; built from all the places Tyler’s hands have been that Michael hasn’t even seen. 

 

“You guys ready to roll?” Luke asks, and Calum hops down off the kitchen counter to sling an arm around his shoulders. 

 

Michael grits his teeth. He pushes past Luke to stride out of the kitchen, not looking back to check if they’re following and still feeling it to his bones where his arm brushed Luke’s, goosebumps making Michael’s body feel like it’s too small for him, somehow, pinching now.

 

“PDA isn’t any less puke-inducing when it involves a stupendously hot dude,” Michael bites out at him, because he feels sharp and hot and metallic inside and he needs to get it out. “Just fucking saying.” 

 

Luke’s look of confusion is still firmly in place when Michael dares to glance at him across the hood of the car and he shouldn’t have, because Luke’s face - even pitched in a hundred different directions with bewilderment - never fails to make whatever Michael had previously been feeling seem instantly utterly unimportant when compared to a fierce fondness for Luke that could put out forest fires, let alone mere teen angst. 

 

“Which … is Tyler … One of us is ‘stupendously hot’?” Luke asks Calum, and Calum only laughs, looking instead to Michael like ‘can you believe this guy?’ 

 

The problem is, Michael can. 

 

____

 

The first time the three of them play something that could almost be called a ‘show’ together, Tyler isn’t there. 

 

Michael isn’t going to credit the _entire_ evening’s success to this small and simple fact, but well … 

 

They might even manage to score a drummer out of it; Calum is currently talking this guy’s ear off and Michael recognizes him from parties they’ve been to, local shows they’ve hung around outside of, and he’s got a good feeling about this, this ‘Ash’ guy might just be everything they’ve been looking for. 

 

Luke looks altogether too pleased by these turns of events, if you ask Michael. 

 

He’s leaning against the wall right next to Michael, casual as you please, pressed close enough for their bodies to touch at their shoulders, their hips, their thighs, and it’s not as if the cafe is crowded, so there’s absolutely no need for it. There’s also no reason at all for it to make Michael think of other times when Luke has been pressed up against walls recently. 

 

“If my boyfriend was doing something this important, there’s no way I’d think it was cool to skip out on him.” 

 

It comes out of nowhere. It’s been on the tip of Michael’s tongue all night. 

 

Luke looks at him like he isn’t speaking English, and Calum and Ash laugh at something else entirely. 

 

“Just saying,” Michael adds, an afterthought that doesn’t make the previous sentence stick out any less like a sore thumb, but could, if he squints hard enough. 

 

Luke tilts his head, surveys Michael from the corner of his eyes like maybe if he looks at him from another angle he’ll see whatever it is he’s missing. 

 

Eventually, he seems to give up, and simply shrugs. 

 

“Everyone who really matters is here, you know? Tyler’s got other things going on. I don’t mind.” 

 

He knocks his shoulder in against Michael’s and follows the movement down, slumps until they’re slotted together like puzzle pieces. 

 

Ash and Calum have stopped talking to stare, but Michael finds that he doesn’t much mind when Luke is warm against his side, sweaty from their set and making no move to text or call his boyfriend who isn’t here right now. 

 

“So, Ash, how do you feel about All Time Low?” 

 

____

 

All things considered, Ashton brings a lot of things to the table when he joins their band. 

 

He’s the oldest of the four of them, and with his age comes the wisdom of a much larger, far more widely cast collection of musical knowledge than the other three have had the time or focus to find. 

 

His age also gifts them with his car and a much-needed ID for buying beer, neither of which hurt. 

 

But the biggest change Ash makes to their dynamic - and something that Michael isn’t at all sure he could or should accredit to Ash’s age - is commitment. A level of focus and level-headed seriousness that both impresses and frightens Michael. 

 

Ashton isn’t in any of their classes, doesn’t have to worry about classes at all at this point, and so they can no longer cite excessive homework or tests or general academia-induced-exhaustion as a viable excuse for postponing or skipping practices. They book gigs regularly now. They have a band email address. 

 

Put simply, Ashton is what they’ve been waiting for. 

 

That in itself isn’t what Michael finds terrifying about all the changes his rounding out their band brings. 

 

With Ashton on board, taking the helm so to speak, their band becomes a very suddenly tangible reality. It’s nothing to brush off, now. Nothing to talk down when it’s brought up by others, as it increasingly is these days. 

 

Ashton makes their dreams seem within reach. 

 

He brings their potential to do and be something _more_ into such sharp focus that he inadvertently forces Michael to acknowledge something that he’s very carefully been sidestepping for what suddenly feels like a very long time. 

 

Being in a band isn’t just a distraction anymore, doesn’t have to remain a faraway, distant, almost entirely unlikely possibility. 

 

The knowledge that they might actually get to do this for real forces Michael to examine the how and why of that, and at the very forefront of that - of what they’re doing here - is Luke. 

 

It’s really no coincidence that Luke is always where Michael is looking, always seems to be ahead of him and everything he’s consciously, subconsciously, stubbornly striving to reach. He’s not just the figurehead for what Michael wants, not just the front man in Michael’s band, unwilling though he is to be one. 

 

Luke is knotted tightly into every inch of Michael’s dreams. His outlandish hopes, his lofty aspirations, his mundane daydreams. 

 

Even if there was no band, Luke would still be what Michael is fighting to find a way to hold onto. 

 

Ashton showing up to redirect every minute of their every day to whatever it will take to see this band _make it_ also, unfortunately, makes it impossible for Michael to deny that anymore. 

 

To himself, at least. 

 

____

 

Of course, the flip side to Ashton’s arrival making them all sit up and start acting like adults is the fact that when he’s not around to herd them all into productive action or conversation, all sense of truly motivated commitment goes sailing straight out the window. 

 

 _brb. ms o neill caught me txtin. i think. hard to tell, w./ the crossed eyes an all_

 

Michael would laugh, if he hadn’t found himself on the receiving end of that particular and particularly confusing gaze a lot himself, recently. Luke is in their science class. He’ll be forgiven for finding it impossible to concentrate. 

 

Knowing Calum, he’ll get distracted by something that brings out his very secret, very endearing sense of science nerd-ery, so Michael closes out their group text box and opens up a new thread with ‘L u k ey <3’ - Calum’s doing, not Michael’s, though he hadn’t had a leg to stand on when, in pointing this out to Ashton, Ashton had asked plainly and patiently why Michael had never edited it back. 

 

“Because reasons,” he’d said, left floundering, and it’s what he chalks today’s need to touch base with Luke up to, too. Michael is home sick from school, and he hasn’t seen Luke since practice last night. He’d needed to text Calum too, it’s totally normal for a young man to miss his very good friends and bandmates, he reasons. Because reasons. 

 

 _Did Ms.O’N ask Cal a question? Do I need to phone in a fake bomb threat?_

 

Calum has a nerd-on for science, but that feeling isn’t always necessarily mutual. It wouldn’t be the first time Michael had to resort to shenanigans in order to disguise the fact that Calum’s enthusiasm doesn’t always come across in as nuanced a way as he or his teachers might like. 

 

The blinking dots meant to inform Michael that he’s being replied to shouldn’t still send a happy, satisfied little shiver up his spine, because he and Luke have been friends for ages now and the simple act of replying to Michael’s text doesn’t say anything much in the grand scheme of things, but Michael finds himself pleased by the immediacy, strangely victorious about how this makes him feel like he has a right to claim he’s of clear importance to Luke. Maybe not as high on that list as some others might maybe unfortunately be, for the time being, but high up there nonetheless. 

 

 _Nah, it’s atom stuff he’s got this_ , Luke says, and the dots keep flashing away, so Michael settles further down into his bed, dropping his phone into his sheets while Luke texts so he can reach for his pillow and bunch it up better under his head, really get comfortable for a conversation that will continue through to lunch, if Michael can help it. 

 

 _How are you feelin ?_ Luke texts, and then _Still snotty?_ after a second. 

 

Michael grins, promptly feels ridiculous for it, and utterly fails to keep the expression from his face as he replies. 

 

 _Just a sore throat now, but being tucked up n bed while u lot are stuck in class definitly helps._

 

 _:((((_ is Luke’s only reply for a moment, during which Michael valiantly does not think about Luke’s pouty face and how it makes Michael want to suck on his bottom lip, get his teeth in on that action. 

 

When Luke’s next message consists of: _Ty is sick too, Maybe I passed what he has on to U? Hope Cal and Ash don’t get sick next_ , Michael finds the thought a bit easier to ignore. Largely because he is reminded of watching Luke suck face with his boyfriend this weekend, and struck with the urge to vomit instead. 

 

Except it’s not really the urge to throw up at all. It’s worse, somehow. Michael can’t shake the image from his mind, no matter how hard he screws his eyes shut, no matter how hard he concentrates on picturing something - anything - else. Front and center in the vast black behind his eyelids is a hd, technicolor replay of Tyler’s fingers on the hinge of Luke’s jaw, the flash of his tongue slipping up and over Luke’s bottom lip, Luke’s mouth open and soft for him. 

 

Michael wishes the thought and image only made him want to empty out the contents of his stomach. Instead, the memory hits him somewhere higher, lodges itself sharp and huge somewhere much, much deeper. 

 

 _just saying?”_ Luke texts again, when enough time has gone by that he has to know Michael isn’t going to respond. Michael doesn’t even open up the message, just glances at the notification when his phone buzzes, and when he sees what it says he thumbs his phone off entirely and drops it off the side of his bed to hit the floor with a dull thud. 

 

He spends the rest of the afternoon falling in and out of an uneasy sleep, dipping in and out of dreams filled with faces he can’t see but bodies he can still feel when he wakes up, palms ghosting up over his elbows, fingertips that were never there mapping goosebumps along the thin skin across his adam’s apple. 

 

 _Can’t make practice, still sick. Sorry._ he sends to the band’s group text thread, though he’s not still sick and he isn’t sorry. 

 

He pulls the covers up over his head as the sun sinks down past the ledge of his bedroom window, and he falls back into sleep still trying to convince himself that the smaller he can make his body in his bed the less huge the hole in his heart will seem, the warmer he’ll be and the less small he’ll feel. 

 

____

 

If Michael seems listless and subdued at school the next day, no one calls him on it. Presumably both Calum and Luke incorrectly think that he’s still recovering, and Michael isn’t going to do anything to dissuade them of that belief if it gives him the time and space he needs to drag his feet behind them through the corridors, slump down in his seat and doodle instead of paying attention to anyone or anything. 

 

It’s a new feeling for Michael, who usually gets loud when he is frustrated, fights fire with fire when he isn’t happy. 

 

Luke is his usual self, smiles away all day and almost always has his phone in his hand, makes no mention of how Michael hadn’t text him back the day before. 

 

Michael finds himself trying to talk around a lump that horrifyingly leaps into new and unavoidable existence, thick in his throat when he attempts to make small talk during first class, and decides there and then that it’s a mistake he’s not going to make again. Not today. Not when he feels like this. Not when Luke is around. 

 

It’s all brand new territory, being caught in the undertow of something so huge, and dragged under by it over and over again no matter how hard he tries to ignore it, to think or feel or lose himself in something else instead. 

 

Michael has never found himself so thoroughly and inescapably _taken_ by anyone or anything before, but he can’t find it in himself to be surprised by how Luke has done such a number on him just by walking into his life. Or - more accurately put - by letting Calum drag Luke into theirs. 

 

As usual, Luke has proven himself to be quietly but completely beyond even Michael’s estimations of him, when Michael already thinks he’s the best and biggest thing he’s ever known. 

 

“You can’t keep this up forever, you know.” Calum tells him, kicking at his feet as they both watch Luke and Tyler walk away hand in hand. They’d said they were going to get burgers, and Michael doesn’t see why this has to involve hand-holding. Michael doesn’t understand why Luke and Tyler can’t be the kind of boyfriends who don’t touch one another for any reason. 

 

Unrelatedly, Michael is struck by the urge to kick something too. 

 

“It’s just flu, Cal,” Michael finds his voice to say, noting that the lump in his throat is gone, now, though his chest doesn’t hurt any less. Maybe he’s sicker than he’d thought. 

 

“That’s not what I’m talking about, Mikey,” Calum says, hoisting himself up onto a wall to sit while they wait for Ash to pick them up after his shift. He’s almost always late, but it’s usually because he stopped to get them all milkshakes or after school snacks, and Michael is so very glad that he agreed to be in their band. “And I really resent the implication that just because I’m the prettiest, I’m also stupid.” 

 

It’s a mark of how distressing Michael is finding all of this that for the first time in the history of their friendship, he doesn’t fight Cal on his frequent and incorrect assertion that he’s cuter than Michael is. 

 

“Luke is the prettiest,” he says, sullen, and a glutton for punishment now, apparently. 

 

“And that’s not even why you’re in love with him.” Calum finishes, going straight for the jugular because he knows Michael well enough to know that sometimes that’s exactly what he needs. A level of honesty that is, as in this case, brutal. 

 

“He has a boyfriend.” Michael avoids eye contact, avoids acknowledging the admission as best he can. 

 

“He won’t always,” Calum says softly, and Michael lets himself lean into it when Calum loops an arm around his shoulders. 

 

“He’ll still be Luke, though,” Michael says, and something in the way he says Luke’s name must clue Calum into what he means by that, because it only takes a brief silence before he says “Oh!” and then starts to laugh. Not unkindly. 

 

“Yep, he’ll still be Luke,” Calum’s grin is loud in his voice, “And that means that he’ll still look at you like he wants to write the world’s next self-titled blink record for you.” 

 

Michael can honestly say he’s stunned by what Calum seems to be trying to say. 

 

“He looks at all of us like that,” he protests, “He wants to make all of us happy.” 

 

It’s something Michael has to try and talk Luke out of sometimes, honestly. He’s too quick and willing to give himself up for others, always ready to do whatever will make someone else smile. 

 

Calum shrugs, and pulls Michael closer so he can rest his chin on the top of his head, arms still looped tight around Michael’s shoulders when Ashton pulls up to the curb, beeping and grinning at them. 

 

“Yeah, but making you happy is what makes _him_ happy.” 

 

Before Michael can further disprove Calum’s very ridiculous, very unfounded theories, he’s hopping down from the wall and loudly calling shotgun, always quick to use Michael’s distraction to his advantage. 

 

Not that it matters much. Calum’s got it wrong, as usual. 

 

Michael is in unrequited love. 

 

That much is painfully clear. 

 

____

 

Life goes on, whether Michael is miserable and heartbroken or not, he is dismayed but not surprised to find. 

 

Calum continues to let Michael tackle him to the ground and lie in a comfort-seeking heap across him whenever he so pleases, and this is as close to heartened as Michael comes to feeling these days. 

 

Ashton is the sickest drummer Michael has ever heard, and every song the four of them write together sounds better than the last, so if nothing else, at least most of the truly important things in Michael’s life continue to be good and getting better. 

 

Tyler keeps showing up to their practices, is around far more frequently now than he’d ever been before, and sometimes Michael wonders what he did to deserve this, but mostly he concentrates his efforts on keeping his glaring to a minimum, instead. 

 

This proves impossible, when Tyler grabs Luke’s hand when practice is wrapping up one evening, and leads him away down to the end of the driveway to say goodbye, clearly unaware that everything he says is still completely audible from there. Especially when someone is straining to listen, as Michael is, ostensibly hunched over in the process of carefully looping his guitar lead into his case, but in reality silently willing Calum and Ashton to shut the fuck up so he can hear better. 

 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” Tyler is asking earnestly, reaching for Luke’s hand, and he always seems to be talking earnestly to Luke and reaching to touch this part of him or that, lately. As usual, Michael can’t blame him, because Michael has those same urges all the time, but he can’t forgive Tyler, either, when Tyler gets to know what it’s like to give in to those instincts. To be rewarded for them by having Luke touch him in return. 

 

“Yeah, probably, I’ll text you after school? I don’t have anything on, unless Cal and Mikey -” 

 

Tyler cuts him off, dipping in quickly to kiss the end of that sentence right out of Luke’s mouth. 

 

Michael hates this boy. He hates him so much it genuinely surprises him when Tyler doesn’t gasp in agony or drop dead right in front of them from the force of the feeling flooding through Michael. 

 

“Cool. Love you,” Tyler says, still bent so close to Luke that their noses overlap in profile. 

 

The sun is low enough to have disappeared from view completely, but the evening is still warm with the light of it, pink clouds stacked over orange streaks of sky. Luke and Tyler stand in shadow against it, and for the first time since this whole mess landed at Michael’s feet, he’s relieved to see Luke kiss Tyler because he does so instead of saying a single thing. 

 

Tyler lopes off, grinning dopily, and Michael’s lead is wrapped so tight around his hand that he can’t feel his fingers anymore. He takes a deep breath for what feels like the first time in hours. 

 

But still. 

 

“That’s not the sort of term you just throw around,” he has to say to Luke, when he comes back to pile his stuff into his case, right next to Michael. 

He always drops his things near Michael’s, and the start and end of practice used to be Michael’s favourite parts, because it meant him and Luke moving around one another in the smallest of small spaces, Michael getting to touch the broad line of Luke’s shoulders under the guise of needing balance. He’s as close tonight as he ever is, but now the need to push Luke’s hair back out of his eyes is painful to ignore. He looks at the dip of Luke’s collarbones when he bends over and his shirt slips away and Michael’s teeth are suddenly clenched, his fingers white-knuckled around the neck of his guitar, his heart thumping in his chest as if to remind him how hollow the sound is, how empty the thud of it feels without Luke’s hands on him to ground it. 

 

Luke looks at him with hard, resigned eyes, and for the first time in weeks Michael is almost sorry. 

 

“I know it’s not my business. You can do and say whatever you want with whoever you want, but -” Michael struggles to find the words that say what he means, and Luke lets him struggle, stands stock still beside him and doesn’t look away from him for a second. 

 

Having to look Luke in the eye while he in a roundabout sort of way pleads with him not to be in love with someone else is hopefully as awful as Michael’s life will ever get, because he couldn’t survive any more than this, he has no idea how he’s getting through this as is. 

 

“Just don’t … don’t say things that you don’t mean. Make sure it’s true, before you tell someone that. Don’t just say it because you feel like you should, or because someone else is expecting you to.” 

 

Though it breaks his own heart to do so, Michael is trying so hard to protect Luke’s heart. To save him from making the kinds of mistakes that will hurt _him_ in the long run, because Michael can cope with his own heartache, but he couldn’t ever handle seeing Luke get hurt. 

 

Having said what he felt he had to say, Michael drops the lid of his guitar case shut and stands next to Luke with his hands in his pockets. He wants more than anything to walk away, to run all the way home and climb straight into his bed and maybe never get out of it ever again, but he’s been running from this, from Luke, for too long now. Luke will never feel for Michael the way Michael feels about him, and that will have to be okay, in the end, but more than anything Michael needs Luke to know that he’s serious about this, that he’d do anything to keep Luke safe. 

 

After a beat of silence and then five or ten or twenty more, Luke stops staring at Michael in something that looks scarily like a watered-down, old and crumbling kind of betrayal. He stretches his mouth up and out in the sharpest, saddest smile Michael’s ever seen, and then he pulls his hood up and bends to pick up his guitar case. 

 

“I didn’t say it back, Mikey,” is all he says before he walks out into the mouth of the garage, waving off Ashton’s offer of a lift. 

 

“I can’t,” he adds over his shoulder before he disappears into the rapidly darkening evening, out of Michael’s sight. 

 

____

 

Things stay tense between Luke and Michael after that, and Michael doesn’t really know why. 

 

He does, however, know well that when things are tense between him and anyone else, the whole band feels it. 

 

Michael’s feelings are kind of a full band responsibility, which Michael would feel guilty about were it not for how it really does take the combined efforts of four people to dig him out of the kind of emotional holes he tends to find himself in. The others don’t seem to mind, either, if nights like tonight are anything to go by. 

 

After practice Ashton physically confiscates everyone’s equipment and piles it into a corner of the practice space to be dealt with later, and then he all but manhandles Michael into the backseat of his car, because Calum has - as usual - called the front seat. Luke climbs into the back of his own accord, which earns him a grin of approval from Calum and a not-quite-look of confusion from Michael. It’s more of a side-eye, really, because this week has been like a throwback to the beginning of their friendship that no one wanted or asked for; Luke and Michael avoiding one another as much and as often as had been possible. 

 

But as it turns out, band bonding does and should come before all else, and after several hours spent driving around with no particular direction in mind and all the windows rolled down, the volume on Ashton’s shitty radio turned up as high as it can go, Michael starts to feel better. And so, so much worse. 

 

Music saves Michael’s life every day because even when he doesn’t know where to begin trying to figure out how he’s feeling, someone, somewhere, in a band does. Shuffle has become the necessary and cathartic exercise of trying feelings on until something fits, until something pinches at his waist or bunches up at his knees or hangs off of one of his shoulders, showing him the way, telling him that adjustment is all it will take before _this_ fits. 

 

From the look he sees pass across his bandmates’ faces that night, Michael’s suspicions are confirmed. They all get it. They are, each and every one of them, his people. 

 

And he is theirs. 

 

Ashton and Calum are loudly arguing up front about what to listen to next when this realization settles for Michael like a fog that has been lifted, everything around him shifting into sudden focus, and while they laugh and bicker back and forth the You Me At Six album they’d been playing continues, skipping to a slower song that Michael has listened to a thousand times, but one that doesn’t generally seem to fit in during these kinds of nights. 

 

 _”keeping me awake, it’s been like this now for days. my heart is out to sea, my head all over the place”_ the singer says plainly, laying exactly what Michael is feeling out there for anyone to see, Ashton and Calum’s argument white noise to the lyrics and how loud they are in a way that has nothing to do with volume or sound. 

 

Michael stares determinedly out the window, looking up into the flaring burst of street lights they pass instead of looking at Luke, like he wants to. The way he feels about Luke is part of him now, always there in the tremor that goes through him when they accidentally brush against one another, the hitch in his breath when Luke smiles at him. 

 

But sharing the back seat of a car with him when someone sings about _”that night I slept on your side of the bed, so it was ready when you got home,”_ drives it home harder for Michael, makes him see with new and blinding clarity that even if he’s resigned himself to feeling like this forever, he doesn’t know how he’ll cope with the constant, crushing hope that maybe some day, maybe even just for a minute, maybe without Michael even being around to see it, Luke might feel the same way about him. 

 

The whole car is swallowed up into shadows when Ashton turns off onto an empty stretch of road mapped out by lights from houses here or bus stops there but nothing in between, and Michael shifts in his seat, drops his hands from his lap to the seat next to him so he can push them underneath his own thighs to keep from reaching for Luke. 

 

But then the song ends, silence following the question _”will we be always, always?”_ and maybe it’ll be okay, maybe Michael’s breathing will level out again if he listens to Calum and Ashton argue about what Pierce The Veil’s best song is, maybe the way he feels won’t always be right at the front of what he feels, at the top of his lungs and a plum stone in his throat. 

 

Michael is just beginning to settle back into thinking that everything might some day - maybe even soon - get back to something like normal, when Luke’s fingers find their way around his wrist, and the moment becomes crystalline. 

 

Luke is careful but determined about his task, tugging Michael’s hand out onto the seat between them and threading his fingers down into the spaces between Michael’s.

 

Michael can’t move, can’t turn his head to look across the backseat at Luke or down at where their palms are pressed tight together, because the newest, biggest lump in his throat tells him not to; tells him over and over again as he struggles to swallow around it that looking at this moment too closely or with too much hope might shatter it right apart.

 

( if he looks Luke in the eye and see so much as a shadow of something more there, he won’t be able to help himself, he knows. He’ll be across the seat and _on_ Luke somehow, as much in his space as he’s allowed to be, before Luke has the time to say “just kidding.” )

 

( if he looks at their joined hands and has to watch Luke pull away, or sees nothing at all in Luke’s face that says he understands how Michael feels and isn’t disgusted or worse still - amused by it - Michael thinks he might cry. )

 

And so Michael doesn’t do anything.

 

He lets the moment hold around them; Ash and Cal’s voices a million miles away now, and everything else a faraway note of nothing much, nothing at all important compared to the bubble Michael and Luke sit in, holding hands and in Michael’s case, holding his breath.

 

In warm, close silence they sit.

 

They sit together, and they hold hands.

 

-

 

Ashton drops Michael off first, and sometimes Michael whines and pouts until Ashton will agree to do a loop that sees Michael’s place left till last. Sometimes Michael needs to feel like he’s not missing out on anything.

 

Tonight, Michael gets out of the car without argument, crosses the street in a daze, because he can still feel the friction from where Luke’s guitar calluses rubbed rough against his, and he thinks his hand might never be cold again.

 

Michael has no idea what just happened, and it’s hard not to trip over his own feet when he feels like he’s walking underwater, in the middle of his street, in the middle of the night, waterlogged in his own thoughts, caught deep in the crush of his feelings.

 

As usual, Ashton turns around at the end of Michael’s street. It’s so late that he can’t beep the horn obnoxiously like he can and does during the day, but he slows to a stop when he gets to where Michael is standing on the curb, waiting to watch them go.

 

Calum is blowing raspberries against the window and though he can’t hear it, Michael can see that Ashton’s laughing, waving and blowing kisses all the while.

 

Luke, though.

 

Luke is just starring. 

 

He has scooted across the back seat to sit where Michael had been, and he’s leaning up close to the window, one palm pressed low on the glass. 

 

Michael can’t look away from his face, can’t keep himself from drinking in exactly what Luke looks like right now - eyes wide and full and sincere, his hair pushed out of place like he’s been messing with it, a nervous gesture of his that Michael loves. He isn’t smiling, but he isn’t worrying his lip ring with his teeth, and this might be the first time since Luke got the piercing last week that it hasn’t been the center of his attention. 

 

Now his lip ring sits forgotten, and Luke’s mouth falls slightly open, his bottom lip full and lovely, shining even in shadow when he wets it with his tongue. 

 

“I love you,” he mouths, the words as clear as if he’d said them out loud, said them right in Michael’s ear. “I love you,” he shapes again, slower this time, like he’s afraid Michael didn’t get it on the first go. 

 

And there’s that stillness again - this heavy sweeping pause that makes Michael feel like he’s held in amber, unmoving but not stuck. It’s only now, when he’s in it for the second time tonight, that Michael recognizes what it really is. 

 

Luke is doing what Luke has always done, right from the moment they met and he decided to let them keep him. 

 

He’s rearranging everything Michael knew or thought he knew, Michael’s feelings for him reaching deeper, settling home in him until everything around that has to shift so that it fits - new and huge and right in him. 

 

Luke loves him. 

 

And it’s not just Michael’s imagination, not just his wishful thinking that lets him think that Luke doesn’t mean in the way he would if he were to say the same thing to Calum, to Ashton. 

 

Luke stays looking at him, leans close enough to the window that his nose is nearly touching the glass now, and he’s not smiling, but his lips are pursed, this pinched little lift to one corner of his mouth telling Michael that he’d like to be. 

 

“I love,” his mouth shapes once more, pausing for just a beat, the “you” he finally adds making it look almost like he’s blowing Michael a kiss. 

 

And then he’s really smiling at Michael, grinning actually, before Ashton drives off, taking Luke and Michael’s ability to stay standing with him. 

 

He sits down on the curb outside his place, too floored to keep walking, feeling too much to try and contain it all in himself inside. 

 

The night hovers on the precipe of the point when late becomes early when Michael pulls his phone out of his back pocket, finally deciding to take himself to bed before the morning sets in, before tonight becomes tomorrow and this day has ended. 

 

There are still stars in the sky when he sends the text, and his hands will shake until after he sends it, until he makes it inside and locks the door behind him, until he has brushed his teeth and changed his shirt and dropped his jeans in a heap by his bed and climbed in under the covers. His hands won’t be soothed still of their trembling until, when just about to finally fall asleep, he receives a reply. 

 

“ _Me too. I love you too. Loved you first. Love you the most_ ,” he’d said. 

 

“ _Its not a competition u know. I have some things to sort out but we’ll tlk soon? After practice 2mr? Love you. 28 &B_,” is the response he gets, and it takes him a minute, but eventually he gets it. 

 

28&B. 

 

To infinity and beyond. 

 

Michael falls asleep slowly, easily, for the first time in weeks. 

 

He dreams of the same things he’s been dreaming of for what seems like forever already, but tonight they don’t become nightmares, and he won’t wake up wanting. 

 

Or rather, he won’t wake up wanting for something he can’t have. 

 

Tonight envelops him with open arms full to brimming with possibility, and Michael goes, and Michael sleeps. 

 

____

 

The next day passes in a shuttering flash of moments that barely register for Michael through the ‘what if what if what if what if what if’ that paces his heart all day. 

 

Some things are important enough to leave their mark, however. 

 

Like the moment when Luke arrives to school to find Michael already there, waiting for him outside their first class. It’s the first time all year that Michael has beaten him there and his smile turns soft when their eyes first meet, stretches out into laughter soon after. 

 

Or the moment when they’re climbing up off the ground to head back inside after lunch and Luke reaches out a hand to help Michael, letting the contact linger too long and brushing his thumb featherlight across the thin skin of Michael’s wrist. 

 

But the moment that sticks out most of all, sticks in Michael’s throat with sharp edges, tinged metallic with the glint of guilt, is the one when Luke arrives to practice still in his school uniform, hours after Michael had to let them part ways after class. His eyes are red-rimmed, exhaustion loud in the slope of his shoulders, deafening in the way he drags his feet. 

 

It’s the first time in a while that Luke has shown up without Tyler in tow, and the way he drops his phone into his guitar case before they get started speaks volumes. 

 

Michael is happy, but he doesn’t know if he should be. If he can be. 

 

____

 

Ashton and Calum’s houses are always full. Full of family, full of siblings, full of friends, full of noise. It’s why Micheal needs to hang out there, sometimes, when the quiet solitude of his own place gets to be too loud. 

 

Today, after practice, they pile into Ashton’s car and head for Luke’s home, instead, because unlike Michael’s it feels lived in, it’s big and comfy with signs of life everywhere you look, though there’s no one there right now: Luke’s parents gone away for the weekend, his brothers both out with their friends as usual. 

 

They don’t often come here, not all together at least, but today it seems fitting. Calum and Ashton might not know as well as Michael does that Luke’s in the middle of something, but they know enough, it seems. 

 

The four of them fill up the kitchen, Ashton trying to pull the age card when he pushes Calum out of the way to put pizza in the oven, Calum jumping on his back to do absolutely nothing to disprove his point that he’s the sensible one here, he’s least likely to burn Luke’s house down before dinner time. 

 

“This is nice, isn’t it?” Ashton says around a mouthful of food, all of them piled up on the sofa together with their elbows in one another’s sides, Luke’s right leg hooked up over Calum’s, his left pressed right up against Michael’s. 

 

“Which? The mediocre pizza or your hip in my kidney?” Calum asks, squirming to get comfortable, or maybe to reach for the Xbox controllers, Michael can’t really tell from this angle and he’s too full and comfortable to move. 

 

“This is not even remotely where your kidney is, Cal,” Ashton informs him, giggling harder than Calum does when he tickles him in the side. 

 

“He means …” Luke interrupts, and it’s the first thing he’s said in a while, so they all fall a little bit still, prepared to listen. “Like. All of us, together. Making dinner. Hanging out. We could do this, you know? The four of us living together, recording, being … this.” 

 

He gestures around the room, presumably at where their gear is stacked high by the door, thanks to Calum’s paranoia that Ashton’s unremarkably awful car is going to get stolen with their entire lives inside it. Michael looks to where their shoes are all dumped in a pile and catches Ashton’s eye when they both glance at the completely empty second sofa across the room, the one none of them seem to have seen before right now. 

 

“Luke, when you were a little boy - or. Littler boy? Did you dream of a castle filled with smelly socks and guitar leads and forts built out of stacks of amps and old takeout boxes?” Calum waits patiently for an answer, doesn’t seem to be teasing. 

 

“No,” Luke tells him, “But maybe I am now.” 

 

Calum thinks about this, and then nods. Ashton catches Michael’s eye again and grins. 

 

“Well I’m gonna raid Liz’s freezer for ice cream, and then I’m thinking we should go to the movies? It’s Friday night and I don’t think we’re allowed to stay in at this age. It’s against the law,” Ashton says, and “Hear, hear,” Calum agrees. 

 

“I’ll pass,” Luke says, stretching his arms up over his head, his hips slipping low on the couch until his ass is barely still on the cushions. He looks sleepy and sad and Michael wants to turn over and lay across his body, keep him warm, help him rest. “I’m spending tonight lying in bed doing absolutely nothing before the rest of my weekend gets eaten by homework and you fools.” 

 

Ashton and Calum grumble but let it go, and Michael doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t know what words will make it so he gets to stay here with Luke instead of going out with Ash and Cal, instead of going home, instead of having to be anywhere else at all. 

 

His entire band come to his rescue. 

 

“Wanna hang out for a bit and work on that geography thing?” Luke asks, still sloped down in the  
cushions so his head is against Michael’s shoulder, so he’s looking up at him through his eyelashes. His hands are folded on his stomach, fingers knotted together and his thumbs giving away his uncertainty, drumming against the knuckles of his index finger. He shouldn’t be uncertain. Michael would do anything he asked. 

 

“Yeah, you two get a head start on that so I can copy it on Monday morning,” Calum says, already getting up off the couch to gather their plates in a stack, and Michael has to lean forward and hug him around the waist because the three of them are in the same geography session and they all know that they don’t have homework for that class. 

 

Ashton shoots Michael a discreet thumbs up when he bends to pick up his and Calum’s shoes and hoodies, and Michael can’t return it because Luke has banded his arms around Michael’s chest, is bodily pulling him away from Calum and back down onto the sofa with him. 

 

Michael feels distinctly kept, when Ash and Calum close the door behind them, leaving him and Luke alone. Luke hasn’t let go of him, has his chin propped up over Michael’s shoulder and his arms around him still, and Michael feels keenly _wanted_.

 

“I really am tired,” Luke mumbles against the side of Michael’s face, and Michael isn’t brave enough to do anything more than tilt his temple in against Luke’s, but even that much feels huge. 

 

“Nap?” he suggests, and he only means for them to fold up together right here in the living room, but Luke nods and mumbles something Michael can’t catch, and then he pushes Michael gently off him and stands up, holding out his hand. 

 

They curl up together in Luke’s bed with their clothes still on. Michael is the little spoon, Luke tucked up behind him with his arm thrown across Michael’s side, his cheek pressed warm to the top of Michael’s spine. Their knees curl together like brackets, and because Luke always makes Michael feel like he can be as brave as he wishes he was, he reaches for Luke’s hand and holds on tight. 

 

Luke falls asleep first, and Michael follows, not far behind. 

 

____

 

When Michael wakes up, it’s dark outside. The sky between Luke’s curtains is black, but it doesn’t feel very late. Michael’s second thought is that it’s probably before midnight, still. His first thought is that he’s being watched. 

 

Luke is propped up on one elbow behind him and the hand that he’s using to brush Michael’s hair back out of his face isn’t enough to have woken him, Michael knows. 

“You’re such a creep, Hemmings,” Michael says mostly into Luke’s pillow, and he’s glad for that when this makes Luke laugh and scoot back down into the bed, wrap himself tight around Michael, because his grin would light up the whole room otherwise, he’s sure. 

 

“I’m so into you it kind of scares me,” Michael says next, voice small even though he turns his face up out of the warmth of the pillow to say it so Luke can hear. 

 

“Same,” Luke says, with his mouth hot and soft up under Michael’s ear, “Or didn’t you catch my chick-flick confession last night?” 

 

Both of his arms are around Michael’s chest, they’re pressed together from head to toe. Michael has never felt so good in his own skin before. 

 

“Oh I caught it alright. I sat in the road for like two hours after you were gone, freaking out.” 

 

“I went home and tried to think of a good way to break up with my boyfriend.” 

 

At this, Michael turns in Luke’s embrace to face him. Luke’s arms slip lower to loop around Michael’s waist, but he doesn’t let go. 

 

“You didn’t have to -” Michael starts to say, but Luke doesn’t let him finish. 

 

“Yes I did. I absolutely did. Even if you didn’t feel the same way, it wasn’t fair to keep pretending.” 

 

Michael frowns, and Luke doesn’t say anything, patiently waits for his thoughts to come together. He never rushes Michael, never judges him, never presumes to know what Michael will say before he says it. He’s always given Michael so much of his time, so much space to figure out what he wants to say, what he wants to do, who he wants to be. And Luke’s always right there to accept and encourage him, when he does decide, when he gets it together and figures it out. 

 

“Why were you with him in the first place? You must have liked him. You must have had feelings for him?” Michael can’t imagine that Luke could or would ever string someone along for no reason. 

 

Luke takes his time when it’s his turn to figure out an answer, and Michael can give him all night if he gets to wait like this - in Luke’s bed, wrapped up tight in him. 

 

“I had feelings for you first. Big, huge ones. I figured you’d never want me back. And then I talked myself into thinking that even if you did, we couldn’t be together if we ever wanted to be in a band. I was … scared, I guess. I met Ty and he was nice, he was sweet. He wanted me and us being together wouldn’t ruin anything, you know?” 

 

“I wanted you,” Michael has to say, needs Luke to know. “Whenever you thought I wouldn’t want you back, whenever that was, I wanted you then. Maybe I didn’t know it yet, but I did, because I always have. Since before we ever had you.” 

 

Luke’s eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles, and Michael wants to kiss him there, wants to kiss him everywhere. 

 

“But we don’t have to rush anything. You just broke up with that dou- with Tyler,” Michael says, solemn even when Luke rolls his eyes, “We can take our time. I’m not going anywhere.” 

 

“You’re not gonna start dating Calum or something, just to make me jealous? Even up the playing field?” Luke is teasing him now, and Michael figures the serious part of this talk has passed, figures it’s safe to finally let his hands flirt with the hem of Luke’s shirt. 

 

“Who says I was jealous?” Michael asks as his palms find the soft, sleep-warm rise of Luke’s hipbones under his clothes. 

 

“Calum, mostly,” Luke says, laughing, and Michael can’t believe this. 

 

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Hemmings. You drove me out of my mind. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice. I didn’t know if my jealous rage was going to kill me or your ex first.” 

 

Michael really, really likes the way that sounds. Luke’s ex might just be his new favourite person. 

 

“Hey, still bearing in mind that we can take things as slow as you need, can I maybe - would it be okay if - can I kiss you?” Michael asks in a rush, almost dizzy at the thought, because his brain hadn’t really caught up to this point yet. 

 

He loves Luke. Luke loves him. Luke ditched his awful ex. Check, check, check. 

 

The part where they’re maybe, kind-of, sort of, almost, probably some kind of _together_ now leaves Michael shaking again. 

 

Luke unfolds his arms from around Michael’s waist and slides soft, soothing palms up the length of Michael’s arms, pushing the trembles right out of him. And then his hands are gentle on Michael’s throat, his thumbs brushing up over his adam’s apple before they find the line of his jaw. 

 

“No. I’m kissing you first,” Luke decides, and Michael’s heart hammers in his chest, loud and hard enough that Luke has to be able to hear it. It’s so far from Michael’s first kiss, and it’s the only one that’s ever really mattered. 

 

Smiling when he leans in, Luke’s eyes fall from Michael’s to catch on his mouth, and Michael doesn’t want to close his eyes, doesn’t want to miss one detail of what Luke looks like up close. 

 

Because Luke’s eyelashes seem impossibly long, like this. His hair looks lighter, the golden blonde parts catching the glint of street lamps and moonlight. He’s blushing faintly, his cheekbones pinking, and Michael has to close his eyes in the end, because he’s so in love he feels a little bit like he’s going to cry. 

 

First, Luke kisses him on each cheek. Next, he stretches to kiss Michael’s forehead, the soft underneath of his chin. He licks the tip of Michael’s nose, and it’s so stupid, so silly and sweet that Michael has to lean in blindly to touch his mouth to Luke’s. And then neither of them are laughing anymore, neither of them smiling, because Michael’s mouth has to part around Luke’s bottom lip, and Luke is making a broken, tiny sound that is loud in the darkness of his bedroom. Luke’s mouth opens for Michael, stays soft for him, and Michael’s hands grip tighter at Luke’s hips, pull the two of them flush against one another. 

 

“I love you,” Luke says, with his hands in Michael’s hair, breathing hard from sucking on Michael’s tongue. 

 

“Me too,” Michael manages to mumble, Luke’s tshirt bunched up in his hands and his knee wrapped up around Luke’s waist, “I love you too.” 

 

____

 

They stay like that; wrapped up in one another and lazily kissing, distantly turned on but not moving to make it something else yet, because Michael is serious about taking it slow, because getting to be like this with Luke is already almost too much for him. 

 

It’s going to take some time to sink in. Though Michael knows it, he still can’t quite believe that it’s real. 

 

Luke rolls over onto his stomach next to him, hair sticking up every which way and his jeans riding obscenely low on the curve of his ass, making Michael think about a time when he very recently had to watch as someone else got to map that curve firsthand. 

 

“You know,” Luke muses, tilting his head to smirk at Michael, “Jealously is a really good luck on you. Maybe we should explore that some more. Just saying.” 

 

Michael grabs hold of him and yanks until he’s lying mostly on his back, Luke cuddled up on top of him, staring down at him and smiling sunnily now, dimples and all. 

 

“You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you, Luke Hemmings?” Michael is already envisioning the years stretched out in front of them; band practice and shows, school and then real life, hopefully spent in vans and buses, on planes and on stages, Luke right by his side for every moment of it, making Michael feel like it’s all too much and too good to be true, in one way or another. 

 

“Not even a little bit,” Luke promises, leaning down to kiss him again, and Michael sighs into it, tightens his hold on Luke, and breathes. 

 

____  
____  
____

**Author's Note:**

> None of this is true or intended to besmirch. No one is profiting from this work. Please don't re-post it anywhere else or link it to anyone outside of fandom.


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